North Station is the only metropolitan building housing a hotel, a depot and a
sports arena under one roof.

*

In Puritan days, there was only one institution of higher learning in America.
This was Harvard College, chartered in 1636, and opened in 1639. It was
originally operated jointly by the Province and the Congregational Church, the
charter being copied verbatim into the Commonwealth constitution, which ratified
and confirmed it. All sectarian connection, however, was broken about the time
of the Civil War, when it was given a new form of government in which all alumni
of 25 years’ standing were given a vote. This institution is not entirely in
Cambridge; the Stadium, the Business School and the Medical and Dental Schools
are within Boston’s city limits. During the siege of Boston (1775) the college
moved to Concord, while the rebel forces occupied the college buildings.
Massachusetts Hall in the college yard, built in 1720, is the oldest college
building in the country.

*

Several streets in Boston, including Savin Hill Avenue in Dorchester, and
Nottinhill Road in Brighton, literally meet themselves coming back. These
streets loop around a hill, and end up farther back along the street, thus
producing a corner from which the same street radiates in three different
directions.

*

Puritanism, as known to New England, implied no definite fixed dogmas. Each
Massachusetts town determined for itself, by vote of the citizens in town
meeting, just what the doctrines and policies of its churches should be. For
instance, the official Puritan doctrines in Brookline were so much more liberal
than those prevailing in neighboring towns that the “orthodox” Puritans there
had to attend church in Roxbury. On account of the independence of the various
congregations, the Puritan church later dropped the name of Congregational. The
name Puritan had no implication of so-called “purity” of life, as they made no
claim to being ascetics. They got their name from the fact that they sought to
“purify” the Church of England of alleged pagan influence.

*

How much of Boston has been filled in can be seen from the presence of such
names as Dock Square, Salt Lane, and Beach Street, at points now far removed
from the water. On the Cambridge side of the river, such names as River Street,
Dock Street, and Front Street at points now inland, point to the same thing.

*

In traveling from the Watertown Car House to downtown Boston by the nearly
straight route of taking the trolley to Central Square in Cambridge, then by
subway downtown, the Charles River is crossed no less than four times in about
six miles. The somewhat more roundabout route of the direct car via Newton and
Brighton avoids crossing the river.